Research

Groundwater, irrigation systems, and agricultural adaptation.

My research examines how agricultural systems respond to water scarcity, economic constraints, irrigation technology, and land-use change. I combine agricultural economics, hydro-economic modeling, geospatial analysis, and optimization to develop decision-support tools for groundwater-dependent regions.

Research Themes

My work is organized around four connected themes that link water, agriculture, economics, and spatial decision-making.

Groundwater Sustainability

Evaluating how aquifer depletion affects irrigation capacity, crop production, land-use transitions, and long-term agricultural viability.

Hydro-economic Modeling

Developing economic and optimization models that represent irrigation investment, crop choice, pumping costs, groundwater constraints, and net returns.

Geospatial Agricultural Analysis

Integrating remote sensing, GIS, county-level agricultural data, climate, soil, and water datasets to analyze spatial patterns in agricultural systems.

Decision-support Tools

Building practical tools that help evaluate irrigation technology, water savings, crop transitions, and economic feasibility under changing conditions.

Current Research Focus

My current work focuses on the U.S. High Plains Aquifer and related groundwater-dependent agricultural regions.

High Plains Aquifer irrigation transitions

I study how declining groundwater availability may shift irrigated agriculture toward lower-capacity irrigation systems, dryland crop production, and alternative land uses over multi-decade planning horizons.

Bioenergy crops and land-use change

I evaluate whether perennial bioenergy crops, including switchgrass, can support transitions from water-intensive irrigated systems while contributing to conservation, carbon, and agricultural resilience objectives.

Irrigation system upgrade economics

I develop decision-support tools that combine climate, crop yield, soil, slope, energy prices, and investment costs to assess the economic feasibility of irrigation system upgrades.

Field-scale irrigation efficiency across the United States

I am building a field-level dataset of modeled irrigation-system use and application efficiency for irrigated fields across the conterminous U.S., and using it to evaluate the water, energy, and carbon trade-offs of targeted irrigation system upgrades.

Collective groundwater management and conservation leakage

Coupled hydro-economic and MODFLOW groundwater-flow modeling of the Ogallala Aquifer to quantify how hydrogeologic leakage limits decentralized conservation, and how the scale of collective pumping management can recover conserved water.

Results in Maps

County-scale results from the 30-year hydro-economic simulation of the U.S. High Plains Aquifer published in Agricultural Water Management (2026).

Map of annual groundwater level change across the High Plains Aquifer, 2009 to 2024 — **Annual groundwater level change** Mean rate of water-level change, 2009 to 2024, from USGS monitoring data.

Map of modeled 30-year change in groundwater storage, as a percentage of initial storage, across the High Plains Aquifer — **30-year change in storage** Modeled change in aquifer storage after 30 years, relative to the initial volume under irrigated maize.

Map of modeled years until counties in the High Plains Aquifer transition from irrigated maize to dryland production — **Time to dryland transition** Years until irrigated maize becomes economically or hydrologically infeasible. Cross-hatched counties see no transition within 30 years.

Map of the opportunity cost of switching from irrigated maize to perennial switchgrass by county across the High Plains Aquifer — **Opportunity cost of switchgrass** Profit foregone relative to irrigated maize, the minimum incentive needed for adoption of perennial switchgrass.

Figures from Ramaswamy, Uludere-Aragon, and Lark (2026), Agricultural Water Management 334, 110675 (open access, CC BY). Click a map to view it at full size.

Methods and Data

My research uses a combination of economic modeling, spatial analysis, optimization, and agricultural datasets.

Hydro-economic modeling Optimization GIS and remote sensing Crop-water analysis County-level agricultural datasets Groundwater data Excel/VBA tools Python and ArcGIS workflows GAMS modeling MODFLOW groundwater simulation EPIC crop modeling Google Earth Engine

Interested in research collaboration or related work?

I welcome inquiries related to agricultural water management, groundwater sustainability, irrigation economics, land-use transitions, and decision-support modeling.

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